Within the last 10 years a large body of art has developed involving the formulation of dietary products for weight control purposes particularly for consumption by obese individuals. Development has taken two directions. One has involved the formulation of dietary products providing in themselves complete nutrition so that an obese individual could substitute a measured quantity of such products for his normal food. In this way convenient and accurate control of caloric intake was possible, and yet adequate nutrition was maintained with respect to protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamin, and mineral intake.
Other developments have not involved nutrition as such, but rather the preparation of imitation foods having very low caloric value yet which closely resemble conventional food products. Such products are attractive for weight control diets and other special diets for the restriction of fats, carbohydrate, salt, residue, etc. since they may be ingested in substantially unlimited quantities and are useful for consumption when eating as a social activity rather than one simply to maintain life. They provide the gustatory pleasure of consuming various types of foods which would otherwise be unavailable or restricted because of the requirements of the special diet. The present invention involves compositions of this latter type.
The compositions of the present invention may be classified as imitation butter, margarine, cheese spreads, dips, frozen desserts including ice cream and sherbert, puddings, icings, salad dressings, sauces, and the like. They depend largely for their character on the polyglycerol fatty esters as emulsifiers or foaming agents. The latter substances are accepted as food additives under Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 121.1120. They have been known for many years having been first described in the chemical literature as early as 1930. Improved polyglycerol fatty esters are described in Belgian Pat. No. 623,179 published Apr. 4, 1963 (Chemical Abstracts 60, 13803b). The polyglycerol esters have been widely used in margarine manufacture as anti-spattering ingredients and in the preparation of shortening compositions for use in the preparation of confections and pastries because of their emulsifying qualities. Refer for example to U.S. Pat. No. 3,230,909 and Belgian Pat. No. 656,949 dated June 10, 1965 (Chemical Abstracts 65, 6204d).